As I have said, I am a very devout agnostic. Reading the Bible is a very weird experience for me. You see, I think that anyone claiming to have knowledge of god’s plan is full of bullshit. I can’t imagine how big one’s balls have got to be in order to make such a ridiculous claim. God clearly works on a higher plane than we can understand as mere mortals. How is it even possible that the human mind can wrap itself around god? (I don’t think it’s possible at all.) For that reason I believe that the writers of the Bible, Talmud, and Koran were the most presumptuous people to have ever lived. All they were doing was taking shots in the dark. Sure, there may be some small chance that they got one or two things right, but I find that highly doubtful. For that reason I think that anyone who lives by the word of the Bible is living a blind life. That’s what these religious texts are: blindfolds.

In closing, I’d like to make a slightly inflammatory statement: Everyone who isn’t agnostic is an ignorant fuck. Convert now.

So in both versions of the Bible that I am reading (Amplified and Apologetics Study), the fruit-bearing trees, birds, and animals are referred to as having been created “according to their kind.” This, to me, would suggest that god had some sort of form or template in mind when creating these things, and they were simply made material (presumably from a spirit source). This strikes me as similar to the Greek philosophical idea that every physical instance of something is merely an interpretation of a higher, perfect “form” (I believe it was Plato who thought up this one, or at least he popularized it). The best way to explain it is that the physical world is really a world of shadows or reflections cast by these forms.

Also, thanks to the ASB, I realized that there are time problems present in the creation myth. First, in Gen 1:1-2, it is not made clear whether the earth was plunged into darkness immediately or if this happened at a later date (according to the ASB, some New Agers use this ambiguity as an argument for time for a lost civilization, which I like because I happen to believe in the LC theory). Also, it is not made clear whether the six days of the creation were consecutive or even 24-hour days. This is an argument old Earth creationists use.

Furthermore, man and woman are created twice in the Bible. This woman could have been Lilith, the mother of the vampires. It’s an old pseudo-Christian myth that never really made it into the Bible, but basically Adam had an affair with Lilith and the resulting children became the Christian demons. Later, Lilith named herself Queen of the Demons and began abducting boys and young men and turning them into vampires.

So I told my mom that I wanted to read the Bible, but I wanted a reliable translation. I asked her if she had the Amplified Bible, but she did not. However, being super-religious and hoping that this would convert me, she rushed out and bought me my very own copy of the Amplified Bible. Also, she got me something called the Apologetics Study Bible, which may be pretty interesting. It sounds like it attempts to combine the field of Bible study with various other fields and reconcile it with history, science, etc. I’ll read them simultaneously, switching off after each chapter to compare the translations. (I thought of switching off after each book, but I chose chapter increments because it would be fresh in my mind and I’d be able to better pick out the differences.)

So the only copy of the Bible that I own is called The Message and is a translation in very contemporary English. After reading the first few chapters of Genesis, I got the feeling that the translator was editorializing. Also, a reader of this fine blog turned me onto what is now one of my favorite blogs, God Didn’t Say That. Anyway, I just read a post on that blog that implied that my gut feeling was true and that the translator misses the point entirely.

I wish my Greek and Hebrew were good enough to be able to translate the original text of the Bible. All I really know is Latin, and I decided that if I translate it from Latin I might as well be translating it from French or German. So I’ll attempt to find a well-respected and less flowery translation of the Bible and use God Didn’t Say That to help me navigate that translation.

I have come upon a dilemma in my Bible reading. The only version I have is one my mom gave me which is translated into contemporary language, obviously aimed at hip teenagers. I get the feeling that the translator took liberties in his task. Therefore, I’ve decided to track down a copy of the Vulgate and translate it for myself from the Latin. I feel this will give me the most accurate possible reading of the book. I am very well versed in Latin, so I don’t think it should be so hard. The only hard part is finding a copy of a Latin Bible.